


La Bella Durmiente

by Josies



Series: No Saints Without Sinners [5]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 06:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12227466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josies/pseuds/Josies
Summary: "Well? Was it her?""Yeah. It's her."





	La Bella Durmiente

**Author's Note:**

> Time to fill a gap in canon! It really amuses me how Johnny's not one bit surprised or impressed when the Boss comes to his rescue at the start of SR2. That scene left me thinking that he already knew they weren't dead and that he expected the Boss to show up in a 'I'll beat your ass if you don't' type of way. They were in the same jail the whole time, and I believe Johnny would find out, so I wrote this today as a quick warm-up. The ending's a reference to a sound clip of unused SR2 dialogue of Shaundi talking about her time in jail with Johnny. I think it's uploaded on tumblr and it's the cutest thing and I love it!!

 

* * *

**July 2007**

* * *

 

"You have five minutes, Gat. Then you're on your own."

Johnny nods and the guard leaves. The surveillance camera at the end of the hallway will be turned back on in a matter of minutes. He reads the words on the wall, _Infirmary_ , before slipping in through an unlocked door and closing it behind him. It was a royal fucking pain in the ass to get this thing set up, not to mention it ended up costing him a large sum of money and owing favors to people he's not particularly fond of. Still, none of that matters. He has to know, has to see for himself if the rumors he overheard are true. If it's really her, or not.

The room is empty and quiet, just as it should be, except for the different beeping sounds coming from the other end of it. The generic smell of hospitals makes him frown, but still he has to inhale deep to get his nervous ass together before making his way to the last bed, the occupied one, hidden behind a white curtain. He wants to move quick, he has to, but every step he takes gets slower and heavier. His feet turn into stone and he has to drag them forward and he swears in his mind, that if it _is_ her behind the curtain, he'll never forgive her for making him fight himself like this. For being stupid enough to get blown up. For making him think he failed her, too.

"Holy fuck," he breathes out the words, like it's the first time he's ever felt relief, and he shoves the curtain aside all the way. It's her. It's Doris—it has to be. Her face is mostly covered by bandages, but he recognizes her light pink hair right away. He reaches for her hand, feels her pulse, just to make sure. It's there, a bit on the weak side, but it's enough to convince him that there's blood flowing through her veins. That there's life in her. He still double-checks by pulling the covers down enough to see her tattooed right arm, the dark and hollow eyes of the sugar skull on her bicep, and the roses reaching from her clavicle to below her elbow. The curly letters decorating her chest, a tattoo spelling 'Saints', peaks from underneath the gown, and suddenly he remembers the day she took it to the smallest detail. He went with her to the parlor, expecting her to whine her way through it, but she never showed any sign of the pain she must have been in. He has to believe that she really is the girl he began calling his best friend a year ago. The girl he thought was dead, gone for good.

Johnny swallows. He's not an emotional guy, no, but she's fucking _alive_. Breathing and eating through tubes, but alive. Not blown into hundreds of pieces, lying in the bottom of a river, with nothing left to bury, like everyone thought. No, she's alive. Repeating that word in his head keeps him feeling relieved. Suddenly, being trapped in a prison with a fuckload of assholes doesn't seem that big of a deal. After all, she's here with him.

Thinking he'd never see Doris again hit him much harder than people would believe. Losing Lin only a couple months before made it that much worse. After he failed Lin, he swore to himself he would never let Doris go through the same fate. And now, it's been ten months and thirteen days since the morning he heard of the accident. He thinks about that morning every night he can't fall asleep in his cell. His phone had ran out of battery during the night with all the missed calls and received messages draining it out. He knew what type of news he would receive the moment he saw that the first one was from her number. She'd tried to call him, just once, before midnight. He sat on his bed and stared at the screen, clenching his fingers around the phone so hard the plastic cover made cracking sounds, and he knew.

He'd failed again, and he took it out on Troy by trying to kill him after he betrayed the Saints, after he was made the Chief of Police for heroically busting a whole damn gang off the streets. Emphasis on _trying_. Johnny was furious and careless. Plans like that never work.

He frowns to himself. Does her brother know? Would Stilwater PD go as far as hiding her medical state even from her family? Would they have her family believe she's dead? Would Troy do that, and why? He has to find a way to have an unsupervised chat with Felipe. They were friends, too, but losing Doris fucked her brother up. He blamed her death on the Saints, blamed Johnny and Dex for not keeping her safe, told them to go to hell. She meant everything to him, Johnny gets it. He's never liked that many people, but the Moreno siblings are something else. He'd also never say it out loud, 'cause stuff like that is for pussies, but they are people he'd regret losing. People he _did_ regret losing. Who knows, if Felipe's unaware of his sister actually being alive, maybe this will fix things between them. Johnny hasn't heard from him since the funeral. Reaching out to him won't be easy, but he'll find a way.

"You better wake up, Doe," he speaks in a low voice, still squeezing her wrist in his hand. "We got shit to do. Dickheads to kill. We gotta take back what's ours. Stilwater needs her Queen, right?" He pauses, watching her chest rising and falling. The machine keeps her breathing, and it's steady and mechanical. "Besides, you owe me cash. And a car."

She stays perfectly still. Johnny sighs. _She's not faking it, then_. Not that he really thought anyone, even her, could fake being in a coma, just biding their time with tubes down their throat, but he had to check. If there's anything that would make her open her eyes, it's their damn disagreement over the car she totally wrecked. His custom build and painted Venom. His _baby girl_.

A few weeks after she'd joined, Johnny made the mistake of trusting Doris with his car.  That day she got chased down by the Vice Kings, and yeah, that shit can get rough, but his car ended up looking like she stopped by demolition derby on her way back to the church. Five rounds of demolition derby. The Venom barely made it to the parking lot; a tire blown, full of nasty dents, spitting out black smoke, and topping it all off with weird, metallic squeaks. The new girl was covered in bruises and, honestly, Johnny wanted to kill her. Dex had to talk him out of it. Back then, she didn't say anything. She didn't talk. But months later, when they had gone through shit together, after Johnny took shotgun bullets to the knee for her, they bonded. Became friends, good ones. She started talking. They were similar in many ways. That's why he should have guessed she would deny owing him a new ride when he later brought it up.

Fuck that car, though. Whatever she owes him, it's all trivial. He just wants her to get up and call him an asshole and plan the escape of the century with him. He wants her to breathe with her own lungs. He wants to hear her laugh while they fight their way out, just like she used to. Like they used to.

"I gotta bounce," he says and tugs her back in, smoothing the covers, making sure everything looks the same as when he found her. "I can't come here again. Just hurry and get your burned ass outta that bed. I ain't got time waitin' around, you know. I'm facin' death row when the prosecutor gets their shit together." He looks at her face, wondering how badly damaged it might be under the bandages. "Help me get outta here, and I won't call you Scarface for the rest of your life."

He chuckles quietly. He'd be kidding himself thinking she wouldn't take a nickname like that as a compliment. That she wouldn't carry whatever scars she might have with pride. He forgot how much he likes the way she's taught herself to survive by adapting. How much he respects it. He forgot a lot of things while mourning her, now all coming back to him the longer he stands there, one by one.

He's running out of time, though. Johnny gives her one last look before he steps away from the bed and pulls the curtain behind him back the way it was as he takes his leave and makes it out of the infirmary undetected.

 

* * *

 

"Well?" Shaundi asks, literally on the edge of her seat, as Johnny drops down to sit on the other side of the table. She's a new girl he's setting up shop with. She's a first-timer, just a kid, really, but she knows her stuff. How to make pruno, among other things. She's enthusiastic, even though she's a bit on the slow side, like one Wednesday afternoon she smoked a blunt the size of her own arm and  she's been high ever since. "Was it her?" She tries to whisper, but she's way too excited over the whole thing. There was nothing interesting going on until Johnny needed to ask her for a favor and shared some vague details of his suspicions regarding a friend he thought died months ago.

Shaundi guessed on her own the identity of that friend, which was easy enough, since half the city talked about the Third Street Saints, plus most of the members now populate Stilwater Prison. She knows lots of things about them, about Johnny, and about 'Doe', because she loves being the one who knows everything and everyone, but she decided she'd keep all that to herself for the time being. It's best to play it safe, act a little dumb, see for herself what kind of a man this Johnny Gat really is. So far the protection he's offered her has made her time in jail much easier. She's thankful for that.

"Yeah." Johnny nods after looking around for prying ears. His face shows no emotion. "It's her."

"Really? That's so cool." She looks like she's bouncing a little on her seat. Then she leans closer to him over the table. Her face turns thoughtful. "There's gotta be like, some kinda conspiracy to this. Who do you think is behind it? The government? The Feds? The Mexican cartel? _All of them?_ "

Johnny refrains from commenting on how none of what she just said makes any sense. Because, as an addition to her permanent high, she tested their first batch an hour earlier, and she's probably just confusing reality with some class B action movie, anyway.

"Got no fuckin' clue," he says and pauses to stick a cigarette between his lips, and he lights it up in a way that only helps her get deeper into the whole bad action movie trip, because he looks like the betrayed protagonist as he blows out smoke and continues to say, "but trust me, I'm gonna find out."

 

* * *

 


End file.
